(Old post - late 2016 or so)

First of December and my head’s still stuck in early AD, maybe even late BC. Still thinking about one of the images from my last post — namely, pre-Christian Britons depositing weapons and riches into lakes to honor and impress the gods. It hit me after writing about that in one context (projecting Fiction Conditions) that it serves well in another. I’m taken right now by how well it describes our current approach to data.

As valuable as it is, we toss our data in lakes with all the rest. We toss it in as tribute to the Data Gods in exchange for the hope that they’ll grant us favor, extend useful services, light a path towards prosperity and productivity. And we offer data to project current or idealized status as well — instagramming delicious-looking meals, vlogging the unboxing of expensive gadgets, curating and authoring tweets to portray a certain image. Young people broadcast pictures of themselves holding wads of cash. Older people curate their daily activities and accomplishments for others to marvel at. We’re projecting to peers rather than the gods, but the latter could hardly fail to take notice. I’ve not yet seen a social media algorithm tailored to call people on their bullshit.

(That’s what we’re supposed to do, I suppose.)

Our idealized or weaponized self-data joins the rest in the lake and, as Briton axes, the lake itself is conquered by Romans and sold off to speculative entrepreneurs looking to recover, sort and profit off the contents. They do this in the hopes that they’ll eventually be the conquering Romans — and then the gods themselves, having preempted the established order by lighting just the right signal fire on just the right hill. We’re the Postconquered. We thought we were giving to the gods and gave ourselves to the Romans instead. Who promptly sold us to the Shkrelis.

George Dyson’s SALT talk had a great image, that of canoe construction. Canoes are built in one of two ways: in environments with little wood, only the frame is built from wood and a skin is stretched over it. In wood-rich environments canoes are dug out from larger blocks of wood reflecting the resource abundance. We now approach information in the latter way, carving information out of much larger blocks.

Now that we take such an active role in that, even our dugout methods produce data. As does, of course, commercial activity. And we now seemed to be incentivized to keep making canoes and keep engaging in transactions not for the commercial value but the data value. The details are more valuable than the material-driven profit. We’re on the radar screen of the data gods and it only refreshes when we produce more data — so they want us to keep producing data for data’s sake.

I’m left thinking, in the end, of Gemma Galdon Clavell’s charge fromFutureEverything 2015: get acquainted with your data-double and then sabotage it.

Imagine an entire nation of lakes sold off on the speculation that they contain insight-heavy riches only to discover they’re little more than mud and oil-slick mirages. The few services tossed our way — the Gmails, the Twitters — crumble as they realize the lakes are fouled, the data spurious. But not immediately. Much like the whole online ad business seems to be built on flimsy, deceptive foundations big data could persist for a while. Could fool itself and the tiers of business that filter down from the hilltop.

Until a reckoning. Or until a disruptive signal fire is lit for all to see.

Geldon Clavell’s charge in mind do we continue as the Postconquered data sources, or do we begin to fuck with the gods?